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The Founding Fathers’ family tree

What secrets do William Penn and George Washington have in their family trees?

An interactive computer graphic lets you trace Kindred Britain. The colonists were, after all, British, and you can find them among the 30,000 people in the digital network devised by Stanford University.

You can explore by name, geography, timeline, professions — explorers, artists, novelists, politicians, naval officers. “It is a vision of the nation’s history as a giant family affair,” Kindred Britain says. A messy family tree: bigamists and illegitimate children are included, The Economist points out.

Be sure to read the instructions before you start — it makes Kindred Britain a lot more fun.

Check out the family of William Penn here. See how George Washington was connected to George III here.